misadventures and limited epiphanies: the blackwing blog

Life, in every aspect of the word, is always more vibrant when lived on a regular basis. While the grind of everyday toil may be justified by saving funds for a scheduled vacation, it often consumes a person, and leaves them void of a proper sense of and lust for excitement. When the day comes that we finally get to bury our toes in the sand, we end up doing little more than that, content solely with relaxation over any degree of exploration. We become so rigid to the routine and exhausted by its demands that vacations become little more than physical reprieves from workstations, even if they are a thousand miles away. Now, don't get me wrong, I love me some ass-in-a-sun-lounger time, but laze is better spent on reflection on the enlightenment of adventure than it is for thinking about how much work is going to suck next week while you chug Mai Tais (some of us have more fulfilling jobs than others, but let's be honest--to some degree or another, work sucks). So what are we to do to ensure that we have the proper energy to maintain our regular zeal and make the most of our lengthier recesses? The answer is simple:

Make time for "MicroAdventures" in your regular schedule.

Brad has no Iphone or Beer. This is not me.

What, exactly, is a microadventure? I know I'm not coining the phrase, but I will define it simply as "a physical deviation from a routine, comfortable activity." Sure, lots of people do exciting, active things, like get up at the break of dawn to run five miles every day before work, or go fishing once a week, or hike up a mountain every few days. That's all great and healthy, and if you don't do anything like that on a regular basis, such endeavors may qualify as your microadventures. But for many of us, these activities are commonplace in our lives, and thus become routine before too long. I'm not suggesting that anyone should abandon the familiar, active things they do or their usual indulgances in hobbies and passions, but rather, I'm endorsing the notion that adding a bit of diversity to them, or better yet, within them, will vastly enrich your life. For example, I fish...frequently. In fact, I have to split this essay into two parts because I'm leaving in an hour to go steelheading for a few days and I've procrastinated to write this damn thing for too long. But you're probably nearing the end of your attention span anyway. Okay, right, I fish. Many folks, particularly those who don't live in the mountains, may romanticize a picture of me holding a stunning cutthroat trout or a fat steelhead with a ribbon of cobalt water and snowcapped peaks behind me. They may think, "what a wonderful adventure." Sure, it's awesome as all hell, but don't call Hollywood just yet. I didn't ride 30 miles on horseback with a lever action rifle, battling through a forest of cougars and rattlesnakes and wolves to get to this pristine, untouched stream and draw trout out of it with a bamboo fly rod that I made myself in my free time. Somewhere, usually within 100 yards of where I'm holding that fish, is my pickup truck with m﻿y iphone plugged into it's charger, and a cold case of Hamm's beer in the back. I may be having a really, really good time doing what I love to do, but I'm far too comfortable for most of my fishing outings to even come close to qualifying as "adventurous". So, maybe I could fill my vacation slot with a trip to a backcountry ranch in Montana, where I could get some dirt on my face, blast through some gnarly whitewater in a rickety drift boat, catch the trout of my life, and then spend the last bit of the trip on a riverfront lounge chair, sipping something far more exquisite than Hamm's beer while I look forward to the comfort of the week ahead, knowing I'll be rejuvenated and happy back at my job. That sounds like a fine week off, but let's not get off track here--this is the ends of this discussion; we're exploring the means to get there. A trip like this is expensive, and I would need to save lots of money for it. But while I work and work and work to scrape together the pennies, it is equally important that I take the time to keep my adventure flame burning (cheesy, sorry), so that I can keep sight of exactly what I'm working for, and then have the necessary zest to enjoy it to the fullest when I get there. Enter the fishing microadventure:﻿

A couple of weeks ago, my girlfriend, Kendall, was making the 2.5 hour journey to Boise to gather needs that are either unavailable or ludicrously expensive in our small, captive community of the Wood River Valley. The South Fork of the Boise River lies in a canyon just a few miles off the highway, so I figured Emma (dog) and I would catch a free ride and spend the day chasing trout on foot until she could pick us up on the return trip that evening. It all seemed like a great plan until I looked at the weather forecast the night before we were to leave and noticed a dark gray box where there is usually a happy sunshine icon. While I have little to no faith in meteorology around these parts, I do know that when the page reads "100% chance of precipitation, with high winds," the Weather Service is to be taken seriously. I considered the inevitable anguish of shivering in sleet for 10 hours with no car for shelter and warmth, and canned the idea. As I began to put my fishing gear away, I noticed my space blanket sitting in a plastic tub and was immediately struck by its neat folds. I thought to myself, "Hey, remember when you made your living as a wildland firefighter and you got booted out of helicopters all over interior Alaska and the American Rockies for shifts of weeks at a time, and you slept in a shitty one-man tent that often turned into a mosquito-infested mold colony? And then every morning you pulled on your sweat and muck-frozen boots, and stumbled out to briefing with the crew to listen to the weather report over the radio transmission? And remember how a forecast of endless, cold rain wasn't a deterrent to working, but rather an indication of which depth of misery you simply needed to prepare your soul for? Remember how alive you felt? I grabbed my space blanket (which, by the way, is a 6' x 6' tarp with heat-reflecting foil on the inside), stuffed it in my fishing pack with some matches, a can of soup, and a few energy bars, put it all next to my waders. I glowed with anticipation for what the day might bring. Around nine am the next morning, I watched Kendall's car drive away, up out of the canyon, and as I felt the melting sleet drip from my full brimmed hat to my shoulders, I was filled with an energy that I had not felt for far too long. I didn't have cell phone service, and the loose plans made for my pick up were contingent on her ability to get back down the snow-slosh mud road into the canyon after a full day of precipitation. Emma looked up at me, torn between concern and excitement. I wiped the melting snow from her brow and said to her, "Em-dog, this is living."

I'll leave you with that for the weekend, and tie it all together next week...so long as I don't get mauled by a cougar while I'm sipping my beer from my tailgate between fishing holes this weekend. Stay interesting, and stay adventurous!